Shape Of Cities Research Articles

Adapting Design Principles of Traditional Courtyard Housing for Future Urban Design

Most cities in recent decades have copied the modern type of architecture and urban design of the western countries. Modern cities in different regions of the world have been relatively developed with similar urban form types. In this research, it has been suggested to investigate the traditional or vernacular architecture and to propose new design principles based on the historic shape of cities. Thus the paper has been concentrated on vernacular architecture of traditional Iranian cities. The research has been focused on analysing the vernacular architecture of this country and to define the main traditional design principles in scale of urban fabric particularly in residential neighbourhoods. These principles have been adapted to be applicable for the contemporary life style and condition of the Iranian cities. The design proposal has been assessed via an inquiry by design process in order to understand the feasibility and adequacy of the suggested design principles. This research can show the methodology of learning from the traditional architecture and urban design to make new distinctive urban forms. Such urban forms create distinguished local identity for Iranian residential urban fabrics.

The impact of the informal area expansion on the urban natural ventilation of Alexandria

The city plan of 1921 conducted by the British Sir MacLean was the first scheme of Alexandria in the modern age (Egypt). Applying the network planning basics, the scheme had created an ideal thermal environment for the coastal city; the perpendicular streets on the coast, main axes parallel to the sea and the availability of inner water surfaces, all have played a major role for providing thermal comfort to the deepest point of the city’s south borders in a successful form of cross natural ventilation effect on the urban level. Many changes have taken place on MacLean scheme during the past 90 years, most notable changes were the replacement of the water body (Lake Hadara) with a classy residential area (Smouha) along with significant shrinkage in Lake Mariout surface, accompanied with a huge informal housing expansion to the south, west and east of the city. Gated communities and the governmental affordable housing projects were also some of the major changes in the city. Surprisingly, among the changes of the city shape, only the informal housing expansion came out just like the old layout attributes of MacLean’s scheme with its environmental benefits. This paper is an investigative analytical comparison study depending on fieldwork where the collected air quality numerical measurements (i.e., CO, CO2, relative humidity and particles matter) in the selected test area came out within the global standards. The wind characteristics have been analyzed to assess the real effect of the urban natural ventilation in Alexandria. The study argues that the network planning invented by the early builders of Alexandria and had been applied involuntary in the informal areas has turned to be the preferred layout. This provides a sort of ecological balance along with economic benefits by applying the urban natural ventilation concept, and therefore, better living conditions were provided and the air pollutants’ proliferation has been reduced.

GISデータを用いた都市内における日射量分布解析 その10 人口衛星データを用いた都市形状の再現と建物内の日射受熱に与える影響

GISデータを用いた都市内における日射量分布解析 その10 人口衛星データを用いた都市形状の再現と建物内の日射受熱に与える影響

Theodor Goecke. La vivienda pequeña en el debate urbano alemán de final del S.XIX

<p>The last decade of the 19th century is especially relevant in Germany with relation to the matter of the working-class housing and its influence in the city shape. During previous years, this dwelling was developed inserted into the large and deep urban block with the few exceptions of occasional works of reform character produced by non-profit building societies. In Berlin, the small dwelling becomes, for the first time, in 1891, an object of attention of the professional collective of architects. With Theodor Goecke as one of its main figures, the debate on the urban form and the working-class housing model will lead towards new proposals for a green and extended city, where in addition to the tenement rental building, the single-family house will become increasingly present. The differentiation of traffics, with the consideration of a new type of street for a more domestic living, not foreseen in the significant nineteenth-century designs of the Berliner city, favour this protagonism and establishes a starting point for the new modern approaches that will consolidate in the German urban planning of the first European post-war.</p>

Urban Axis and City shape evaluation through spatial configuration in \u2018Lan Na\u2019 Northern Thailand Historic city

This paper revealed urban axis and city shape identity that influenced by its concepts and present activities issues in ‘Lan Na’ historic cities in northern Thailand. This study using space syntax technic called axial line analysis combined with GIS analysis, to examines how history geo-politic issues have influenced to its urban axis and network. Results show urban axis has highly coexisted with its city shape determined through high integrated axial lines. This city shape was, however, defined by its establishment concepts as ‘Sankh’, ‘Traiphum’ and freeform. Different shapes of urban axis have been determined by these concepts. As well as the largest public space in some ‘Lan Na’ historic cities, it directly attaches to high integrate lines that represent as urban axis core. However, depending on gradually develop influences, the function of public space in urban axis core has various types. Mostly, these spaces, have related to Buddhism religious usage or colonialism spaces. Settlement pattern using kernel analysis revealed that residents in every city settled in a tranquil area determined by space syntax. Additionally, settlement clusters adjacent to urban axis or high activities traffic. In summary, from reviewed historic cities in ‘Lan Na’, it found that this urban axis could be identified using multi-method. To enhance urban axis in historic cities, both object and subject aspect had to be revealed to apply as delicate historic conservation measures.

A body passes by: the flâneur and the senses in nineteenth-century London and Paris

The flâneur is well-known for being the most emblematic nineteenth-century observer of urban life. Critics have often compared the flâneur to a camera eye which records everything and insisted on the predominance of sight over other senses in the cognitive process. This article emphasises the embodiedness of the flâneur’s vision, which is an experience of all the senses. Urban public space can be envisaged as a ‘metabolic space,’ in which “the links between background and figures are very unstable” (Augoyard 1991). The moving body of the flâneur, which can adapt to this changing space, seems to be in an ideal position to apprehend the metabolic body of the city. The flâneur is not only a “transparent eye-ball” (Emerson 2003), he is “a living eye” which communicates with all the other senses and captures the whole experience of moving through the city. By looking at texts by Balzac, Baudelaire, Dickens and Charlotte Brontë, the article shows that flânerie is a sensory activity that shapes our perception of the city as much as the city shapes our own flâneries by transforming our bodies into scribes who write the “thicks and thins of the urban text” (de Certeau, 1984).

‘The social fabric of cities’: a tripartite approach to cities as systems of interaction

ABSTRACTThis paper introduces the main ideas of an integrated approach intended to address three vital yet relatively little explored dimensions in the social and material shaping of cities. First, it looks into ‘cities as systems of encounters’ in time and space – or how we find ourselves co-present with those like us or those different from us in public and private places. Second, it introduces a view to ‘cities as systems of communication’ – or how cities become contexts that help us to produce linguistic exchanges and create massive action systems from seemingly trivial situations. Third, it looks into ‘cities as systems of material interaction’ – or why we shape and fold space into urban space in order to express interactions in complex conditions of interdependence. Finally, the paper discusses substantive and epistemological issues regarding the improbable connections between the elusiveness of actions and the perennial tangibility of their spatialities.

Comparative Study of the Degree of Linkage between City Shape and Railway Network among Worldwide Major Cities

Comparative Study of the Degree of Linkage between City Shape and Railway Network among Worldwide Major Cities

Comparative Comparison of City and Urbanism during Sassanid Period in Iran and the Ancient Roman

Sassanid replaced migrating nomads and tribes with urbanization system and concentration of population. Sassanid desire to increase the population was due to the fact that population is the core of urban systems and focus-oriented system. Sassanid tried marching to Syria and Asia Minor to gain population. Immigrant Roman population was accommodated in newly established cities. Romans had structured and deep thinking about urban development, such that their territory was made up of urban units which were connected through a system of roads and bridges. Romans innovation in urban development can be summed up in creating military cities. Sassanid urbanization after the Parthians was influenced by Roman urbanization which is most visible in the shape of Sassanid cities. In this study, while examining cities and urbanization in Sassanid reign and Roman Empire, their influence on each other and their similarities and differences in their urbanization methods were also investigated.

The impact of urban form on commuting in large Chinese cities

Studies on cities in Europe and the United States have demonstrated that travel behaviour is influenced by urban form. Based on these findings policies steering the shape of cities have been proposed to reduce urban transport emissions and limit congestion. Such policies can also be relevant for the rapidly growing and motorising Chinese cities. Yet, empirical evidence on the relationships between urban form and car usage is scarce for the specific Chinese context that is characterised by high densities, fast development and strong government steering. Using novel crowd-sourced datasets we study the impact of several urban form variables (city size, urban density, land-use mix, polycentricity and spatial clustering) on the cost of commuting expressed in time and distance. The results show that city size and spatial clustering are important determinants of commuting: large cities without clear clusters of businesses and other facilities have longer average commuting times and distances. Increased prosperity also adds to longer and lengthier commutes. Spatial planning measures that maintain or reinforce high-density clusters can help limiting commuting distance and time. Current sprawled urban development may have long-term, negative consequences for the accessibility and liveability of Chinese cities and could hamper their economic potential.

Controlling Mobility and Regulation in Urban Space: Muslim Pilgrims to Mecca in Colonial Bombay, 1880–1914

AbstractThe meanings and practices of space shape how cities are understood and governed. This article argues that space is central to understandings of mobility and practices of regulation in the city. Undertaking an analysis of the regulation of Muslim pilgrims (Hajis) in colonial Bombay (Mumbai) from 1880 to 1914, this article explores urban governance discourses around race, religion and public health at a variety of scales. It investigates the way that Hajis were problematized through these discourses, and targeted as threats to elite power and prosperity in the specific context of Bombay as a global shipping and economic hub. I conclude that elite conceptions of the city shape the governance of problematized bodies in ways which reinforce the meanings and politics of mobility and space. Elite understandings of movement and the city itself shape the practices and targets of urban regulation and control.

Reshaping the Urban Space in Portuguese Fortified Cities

In the early nineteenth century, the (obsolete) Portuguese urban fortifications were frequently ruined and suffering from a gradual desertion around them. With the emergence of patrimonial concerns, those defensive structures began being considered as historical and cultural monuments. As a result, the isolation of these monuments became a common practice that often created public green areas (gardens and parks) framing monuments, giving them a picturesque image. The consequences of these rehabilitation actions on urban fortifications in Portugal are analyzed here, focusing particularly on those that created new public green spaces within and around urban areas. In fact, the shape of several Portuguese cities was conditioned by those interventions: not only were breathing areas conceived in the middle of dense urban masses, allowing their fruition by local populations, but also some ancient urban belts associated with former defensive needs were recovered by those interventions.

Estimation of long term low resolution surface urban heat island intensities for tropical cities using MODIS remote sensing data

The present contribution estimates long term (2001–2014) low resolution (0.05°), surface urban heat island (SUHI) intensities for two tropical urban areas: the Metropolitan Area of São Paulo (MASP) and the Metropolitan Area of Rio de Janeiro (MARJ) located in Brazil's south-east region. For this purpose, it were used two methods: the first one is the Streutker's method, which quantifies SUHI intensities using a Gaussian surface to fit the difference between urban and rural patterns of land surface temperatures (LST). The second new proposed method, estimates SUHI intensities by the difference between the quantile 0.95 of LST for urban area and the median of LST for rural area, separated with yearly Land Cover Type MODIS product at 0.05° resolution. Both methods use remote sensing data obtained from MODIS sensor on board of TERRA and AQUA satellites. An advantage of the quantiles method is that can be used as alternative procedure when the city's shape it is not ellipsoidal or when the spatial resolution is so high that it does not allow a Gaussian surface fit. A drawback is that it would not be possible to calculate a footprint area of the SUHI because the method doesn't fit the LST data to any surface. For the MASP, the results of both methods show an acceptable level of agreement for both day-time and night-time periods. For the MARJ, the SUHI intensities obtained with Streutker's method are lower than the values obtained with the quantiles method by about 2°C, specially in summer and night-time periods. In general, the quantiles method may be useful as a complementary analysis of the Streutker's method for cities with more than one center of maximum surface temperature or with non ellipsoidal shapes. Moreover, by using vegetation indices (NDVI and EVI) data from MODIS, it was shown that the presence of larger amount of vegetation cover within the urban area of the MARJ compared with the MASP, can partially explain the higher SUHI intensities of the MASP in relation with the MARJ.

A Parametric Description of Cities for the Normative Analysis of Transport Systems

Urban transport systems analysis requires some explicit or implicit representation of the network, activity pattern and flows pattern of the city. When dealing with transit design in real systems, detailed descriptions of cities are too complex to allow an analytical formulation that leads to exact results, so heuristics have been used. Alternatively, optimal design of transit systems at a strategic level has been done based on simplified descriptions using regular patterns or small networks to face and solve ad-hoc transit design problems. In this paper we propose a parametric description of cities for the normative analysis of transit systems. This is achieved after a synthesis of different ways to describe a city’s urban form that can be found in the literature, with an emphasis on the road network and the role of centers and subcenters. These diverse descriptions are assessed with the help of topological indicators and synthetic information regarding real cities. The parameters characterize the underlying network, the zones involved and the spatial pattern of transport demand, such that the design of public transport systems can be studied normatively for different city shapes. The model is applied to describe three very different real cities.

The sacred second: religious moments in a Colombo marketplace

How does the marketplace of a busy city shape the religious practices of its shopkeepers? Combining historical and ethnographic research, this article examines the cosmopolitan past and present of Colombo’s Pettah neighbourhood. Its role as an Indian Ocean port resulted in a continual influx of new religious players, leaving its present pluralistic pantheon, from which shopkeepers (many of whom have made their own transoceanic journeys to work in other port cities like Dubai) can choose the saint or god best suited for their needs. Meanwhile, the pace of the marketplace has structured religious time accordingly; sacred moments are improvised sporadically among the bustle of the business day. Religious ritual is now part of the general pattern of marketplace routine, along with a number of other habits for passing time – unscheduled but expected activity, both personally meaningful and socially symbolic. In turn, religious performance can enhance market performance, instrumentalised in spur-of-the-moment sales techniques, lines between sacred and profane continually blurred.

‘Good’ Governance Principles in Spatial Planning at Local Scale

The development of countries, the economy of cities and how cities should be governed is a subject that has been studied by several organizations, in many countries, concerning different levels of public administration. Some of these studies have their focus on fields such as sustainability and environment, sensorial networks or spatial planning.Therefore, this research in based on a literature review and it is focused on the significance of governance role at local scale, for the final decisions that will address the different spatial planning policies and city shapes as a competitive physical form, according to the strengths and weaknesses of a competitive process. It will analyses the good governance principles related on spatial planning actions, considering that Governmental and non-governmental organizations utilize knowledge to reinforce their own position of power, as one of the ways of improving competitiveness, helping to achieve more efficient level of governance, exploring the technology. It will conclude about the needs to identify processes used by local governance to facilitate the involvement of local community in spatial planning decision making, concerning their city or neighborhood.

Historic 19th Century Barracks in the Space of Polish Cities

The article discusses architectural and urban diversity of historic barrack complexes from the late 19th and early 20th century located within the borders of contemporary Poland. Origins of the building complexes are linked to the operation of three occupying powers and their armies in Poland in the period from the late 18th century until World War I (when Poland regained its independence). Nowadays, different in styles, historic building complexes represent a clear element in the structure of many Polish cities. Since the ancient times, barrack complexes have influenced the shape of spatial development in many cities. “Castrum Romanum” was the spatial matrix of many centres, including in Europe: Cologne, Florence, Budapest and Paris. In the area of contemporary Poland, the barrack complexes from the late 19th and early 20th century influenced to the greatest extent the spatial shape of many cities. Today the post-military complexes absorbed by expanding centres during the last century form in the cities clear enclaves distinctive with ordered urban system and consistent architecture, characteristic for all the complexes. Pejorative connotation of the former invaders’ barracks gave way to a new, post-military identity of the places.

Quantification of modification of ground motion due to urbanization in a 3D basin using viscoelastic finite-difference modelling

This paper presents the quantification of modification of ground motion due to urbanization in a 3D basin as compared to the free-field motion. The complex interaction effects of basin and city on the ground motion during an earthquake are termed as site–city interaction (SCI) effect in this paper. The cities were developed using 3D building blocks of sixteen-storey (city 1) and eight-storey (city 2) buildings. The analysis, in terms of ground motion perturbation and % reduction in average spectral amplification (ASA) and kinetic energy (KE) as compared to free-field motion, of the simulated responses of the various 3D basin-city models revealed very large role of basin shape, sediment layering, city shape, building type in the city and city density in the SCI effects on the free-field motion. The first spectral amplification peak frequency at the top of the buildings corroborates with the combined fundamental frequency of the building block and sediment deposit in basin. The obtained very large amplification of the order of 49 at the top of a single B8 building may be due to the closeness of the fundamental frequency of the combined basin-building system with the fundamental frequency of the basin and the dominant frequency in the input signal. This was also responsible for the larger % reduction in ASA and KE in city 2 (B8 buildings) as compared to the city 1 (B16 buildings). Based on the analysis of the obtained results, it is concluded that if a city is developed considering into account the building type, city shape and city density as per the basin shape and sediment parameters can be highly beneficial in reducing the earthquake disaster.

Do People Shape Cities, or Do Cities Shape People? The Co-Evolution of Physical, Social, and Economic Change in Five Major U.S. Cities

Urban change involves transformations in the physical appearance and the social composition of neighborhoods. Yet, the relationship between the physical and social components of urban change is not well understood due to the lack of comprehensive measures of neighborhood appearance. Here, we introduce a computer vision method to quantify change in physical appearance of streetscapes and generate a dataset of physical change for five large American cities. We combine this dataset with socioeconomic indicators to explore whether demographic and economic changes precede, follow, or co-occur with changes in physical appearance. We find that the strongest predictors of improvement in a neighborhood’s physical appearance are population density and share of college-educated adults. Other socioeconomic characteristics, like median income, share of vacant homes, and monthly rent, do not predict improvement in physical appearance. We also find that neighborhood appearances converge to the initial appearances of bordering areas, supporting the Burgess “invasion” theory. In addition, physical appearance is more likely to improve in neighborhoods proximal to the central business district. Finally, we find modest support for “tipping” and “filtering” theories of urban change.Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

Urban land use in the city centre of Akure, Nigeria

Land is germane to virtually all developmental activities of man. The manner in which it is utilized goes a long way to determine the shape and form of cities. Land is used for several purposes ranging from recreational, commercial, residential, industrial and religious. The combination of these uses depends on their relationship. People tend to misuse land or put it to improper use, for example, it is improper to locate a mechanic workshop very close to a residential area. Town Planning and Urban Development Authorities are vested with the responsibility of controlling and maintaining physical development of the city. They make sure that land developers do not exceed the boundaries established by the Masterplan and building bye-laws. In the restoration of cities, illegal structures will be demolished and as the case may be, compensations will have to be made wherever necessary. This paper utilized controlled observations, interviews and structured questionnaires in the collection of data. It takes a look at the general Land Use patterns in Akure city centre. The city centre for this paper is defined by the area covered by Akure in the year 1966. It further suggested correctional measures that would restore the quality of the city centre where the planning regulations have not been adhered to. Key Words: City Centre, Land Use, Pattern, Physical Development